Episode 90 of Ron and Veronica Blessing’s The Game’s the Thing podcast focuses on Ashen Stars, with your humble game designer as the guest. Join us as we talk about the game’s premise, genesis, development process and additions to the GUMSHOE toolkit. Also up for discussion are Hamlet’s Hit Points, why players only think they […]
Category Archives: Ashen Stars
Aldo of Impressions Advertising, together with Pelgrane Press other ImpAdv clients are helping proactive retailers garner preorders for forthcoming products, and giving retailer customers get a taster of games which aren’t yet out. Aldo has started Game Preview Events, and Pelgrane Press is the guinea pig. Aldo has been running FreePRGDay for years now, and […]
Limited Edition ordering is now open to everyone at the store. Edit: The Ashen Stars limited edition email has gone out. If you have problems with the url, please try again. There was a little slip up over file naming. If you haven’t had your email, please contact me. In the next couple of hours, […]
Limited edition ordering is now open to everyone at the Pelgrane Press store. We are making one hundred copies of this limited leatherette edition of Ashen Stars. Fifty of these are available exclusively to Ashen Stars pre-orderers, and they’ll include ten exclusive Ashen Stars tokens for starship combat. We’ll pick one from the image below. […]
Ralf of ProFantasy has created some posters for GenCon…
Dead Rock Seven, the first set of adventures for Ashen Stars is available for pre-order; PDF now, print version in August shipping with Ashen Stars. If you are a pre-orderer, you should have received an email for us with an offer, and an update to your existing Ashen Stars order. The Out of Time print […]
Continuing a basic GUMSHOE motif, Ashen Stars encourages GMs to find inspirations for scenarios in the news of the day. In so doing, it follows in the issue-oriented footsteps of the Star Trek franchise, the Battlestar Galactica reboot, and the general observation that all science fiction is really about the present. For example, you might […]
Earlier I talked about the way every SF game calls for a unique setting, whether the designer likes it or not, because there isn’t a complete enough assumptions set to present a default universe. Ashen Stars creates its setting to serve the action. This of course is how a creator in a non-interactive story form […]
Reviews and Comments about Ashen Stars. Ashen Stars is available to buy from the Pelgrane Press Shop. Download the character creation chapter and part of the GM’s Advice. Reviewers say: A review here. “Look. Just go buy it, okay? It’s worth it, and then some.” A review of the Ashen Stars pre-order edition here. A […]
A hurdle any SF RPG faces is the lack of default setting assumptions. From the earliest days of D&D, we have been accustomed to a portmanteau fantasy world. This hybrid creature sprang from the experimental vats of the wizards Gygax and Arneson, combining the Howard sword and sorcery and Tolkien epic literary fantasy modes into […]